Archive for January, 2007

Our dog (11 1/2 years old) is on a new arthritis regimen--Previcox pills that cost $2.50 a piece, special food that costs 2x as much as Purina One, and we're supposed to be starting her on glucosamine as well. But wow, what a difference!

The week before her last vet visit, she had stopped even trying to go upstairs with us to bed. The 2nd day of the pills, she was racing up like a puppy again. Instead of us coaxing her to try and play, she's back to demanding attention after breakfast every morning.

So it's definitely worthwhile--but it will take some working around. It may come to as much as $900 a year! Hopefully, as the food and glucosamine kick in, we'll be able to discontinue the prescription. (She's already down to taking it every other day.)

I think we can still pay for the pet food out of the regular Everyday Expenses account, it will just take a little more adjusting on other groceries and take-out.

The prescription and glucosamine will have to come out of our Discretionary account, reducing the amount we'll be able to spend on entertainment, clothes and other extras. This is where the Snowmint envelope budget software I got is going to come in very handy. It's already forced me to see that the Philly flower show and the King Tut exhibit are way beyond our budget at this point. I don't mind, under the circumstances, and I'm really, really glad to be able to SEE it in time.

Did you know you can freeze orange juice in the carton, and that maybe you should freeze some this week?

DMom and I were in the Acme yesterday, where her shopper's card entitled her to 6 cartons of Tropicana at $2 each. She bought one, but when we checked out the cashier suggested we get the limit.

They've started seeing the higher fruit and veg prices resulting from the California weather problems--a crate of oranges is now costing the store $48 where it used to be about $6 or $8. She said the price of orange juice will be jumping to about $8 a 1/2 gallon carton next week.

She also mentioned that she's always frozen orange juice in the carton when it's on sale, and never had a problem with the carton bursting. She does freeze it inside a plastic bag, just to be safe.

(Yes, we did turn around and bought all we could. I'm thinking of stocking up on the frozen cans from Aldi's, too.)

The good new is--I went straight over to Commerce to switch our account to the 50+ Club. Free checks, free or reduced fees on some misc. services, and interest checking that's currently paying 1/10 of 1%. (Not kidding!) Also, your safe deposit box is supposed to be free the first year and then 1/2 price thereafter. A nice little perk for getting old.

The bad news is, we seem to have meal moths in our pantry closet. They must have come in with something new, because I've had a stockpile of grain products going for years with no problems til now.

If I didn't have such a big stockpile, the problem wouldn't seem so overwhelming. But from what I've read, the moths and larvae (meal worms, basically) can be in brand-new sealed packages. They can eat through plastic bags. You basically have to go through every package in your house, looking for the main infestation, and get rid of it asap. Cereal, cake mix, dry pet food, rice, etc. Even things that look ok could have eggs in them, that you can kill by freezing the food. But do I really want to eat a cake made from a mix with possible dead moth eggs in it?

The whole thing is creeping me out, OTOH it's really difficult to just throw all this stuff out. Even though I bought most of it very cheap.